Repair Cafe Ready

Repair Cafe Ready

Port Fairy's Repair Cafe Ready For Inaugural Event

Port Fairy's Community House will this weekend host a community event with a difference, with the inaugural 'Repair Cafe' to help locals mend those items that may have been headed for the scrap heap.

The idea is based on repairing rather than purchasing, with various volunteer repair experts available to help visitors repair and fix their items, free of charge.

People visiting the Repair Café will bring along their broken items from home - Kettles, mobile phones, hair dryers, clothes, bags, bikes, jewellery, toys, whipper snippers, garden tools, lamps... anything that is broken (and that you can carry there) is welcome.

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By promoting repairs, Port Fairy's Repair Café wants to help reduce the mountains of waste ending up in our landfills, and give household items a new lease on life.

Natasha Mills from the Repair Café working group says it's a great way to repair pre-loved items, meet new people and learn new skills.

"We tend to just throw stuff out and get a new one, rather than fixing, even things which practically have nothing wrong with them, and which could easily be used again after a simple repair"

"Many people in our community have fantastic repairing skills, and Repair Cafes are a fantastic way to share these skills, and teach others."

The Repair Café concept arose in the Netherlands, in 2009, and was formulated by Martine Postma, at the time an Amsterdam-based journalist/publicist.

In 2010, she started the Repair Café Foundation, which provides support to local groups such as Port Fairy, wishing to start their own Repair Café.

The inaugural event will be held this Sunday from 10am until 1pm at the Port Fairy Community House, and will continue on the 3rd weekend of every month except January and December, alternating between Saturday and Sunday.